Rest in Peace

I had some really bad news today: Mustang Sally is dead. She died on Tuesday and I did not even know about it until today. I read it in the Obituaries.

Sally had COPD and had been in the hospital for a month before returning here to Messiah Manor. Sally was also on CPAP and had been for quite a while.

I am sad because I liked her so much before she went into the hospital and even sadder when she returned to Messiah Manor because she refused to recognize me or talk to me. I did not know what happened or why she would prefer to go inside rather than talk to me. I still do not know why or how it happened, but she is dead now and I cannot ask her. I did write her a letter and put it in her mailbox outside her door with her name on the front asking why. She got the letter but she never spoke to me again. I do hope she knew how much I missed her company and how much I cared for her and about her.

I do know her older brother, Ted, so maybe I should talk to him and ask him. I am sure he would tell me what he knows about it, but then again I do not want to put him on the spot, especially since his sister just died. Oh, well, I have had my say and I hope she was willing to forgive me for whatever she had decided about me.

No matter. She took her animosity to the grave with her and I will have to live with that knowledge. It is the one thing I never got the chance to sort all this out -- and now I will never be able to sort this out. It is yet another mystery that I will never get to the bottom of nor will I be able to make reparations on. C'est la vie.

I found out that Sally was a year younger than I am, something else I did not know. We hit it off the first time and (or so I thought) I liked her immediately. Sally is still listed in my phone as Mustang Sally just as she was Mustang Sally to me in person -- until recently when she returned from the hospital in Springfield and refused to speak to me except to tell me she would not speak to me and went into the building to keep me from speaking to her.

I do not like issues like this one and I will eventually have to go to Ted, her brother, and ask him to tell me why Sally refused to talk to me again and avoided my company even when I talked to her, saying hello and asking how she was doing. I really hate losing people which is why I contacted all my siblings and left messages on their phones. Even Dick gave in and spoke to me after telling me I would have to wait until she was ready to talk. I waited and eventually we talked.

I was happier than when the Mushroom called me and talked to me, telling me that he had gotten married and that I was not invited. Oh well. Life goes on. There will be bumps and potholes in the road and you get over them, hopefully not losing your gas tank or other parts of your vehicle. I lost a good friend and I do not know why or how and now there is a hole in my heart where Mustang Sally lived and that hole will close up and heal, but I will always miss my friend and will continue to think of her as Mustang Sally.

I miss Sally more than I missed losing my Mom and Dad, even more than missing my siblings. Some people get close to your heart and you miss them when they are gone. No doubt, Ted and his brothers will also miss Sally and they will grieve for her as I do. Maybe one of the neighbors here will take me with them when they go to the funeral on Saturday.

I was lost when Sally would not speak to me and I am even more lost now that she is gone. She was younger than I am, a year younger, but she will not get older and I will miss her more and more as time goes on.

Bless you, Sally. I remember you telling your brother, Ted, that you had to coax me into talking the first time and took you a long time to get to know me. 

I remember what Bessie and Dick told me about getting to know my neighbors -- that I must take it slow and watch my tongue. I made friends along the way and have engaged in playing Bingo and sharing communal meals as I got to know my neighbors. Maybe I should have not been so free with my tongue -- at least where Sally was concerned -- and talked with her the way I talked with Mel and Kenny and the other guys around here.

I sat down and talked with Gerry on Tuesday when we took an art class and I helped him with his perspectives on his wolf for his children's book. I eventually took a pencil and redid his drawing, showing him what I meant by fixing his perspective and where the eyes should go. I also him to teach me blacksmithing -- and he agreed to do so. Gerry is a big robust blacksmith of a man with white hair and a white beard. I imagine Gerry as the blacksmith in the poems I read in my youth with his big, brawny arms, his large hands, and his twinkling eyes as we laughed and joked and talked about art and such. He even drove me home after the class so we could continue to chat.

"The smith a mighty man is he ..."

At least Gerry did not laugh at me when he agreed to teach me blacksmithing. His wife is also a blacksmith.

I also landed an interview with the manager of the Kroger store here in Urbana at noon on Monday. I'm looking forward to that interview because it might end up with me getting a job after over two years without a job. I hope so.

Looking forward, I see a job at Kroger, maybe stocking shelves, cashiering, or working at the deli counter. I will get a discount and have a real job -- very different from my previous jobs in medicine, but a real job. I can walk to work from here and it will take about 20 minutes, but I will be employed again. Or I could end up out at Gerry's learning the blacksmith trade, something that would suit me better where I could get thinner sooner as I swing the hammer repairing horseshoes and such and/or shoeing horses and mules, getting plenty of exercise and build my muscles wielding a hammer. I have so much to look forward to doing -- but there will remain the sadness and ache I feel knowing that Mustang Sally died this week and will never come again.

I miss Sally but I enjoy trading wit with Gerry and learning blacksmithing skills just as I enjoyed teaching Gerry about perspective and art and enjoying talking with yet another polymath. Yes, I am back in society again and getting used to living with other people. I expect I will enjoy life now that I am part of the community and making friends like Gerry and the others. Even Evelyn, a Long Island native who now lives in a nursing home nearby because she has metastasized bone cancer. She prefers to be called Marilyn as in Marilyn Monroe. She has moved out of Messiah Manor and I miss talking to her and going to the Senior Center with her. The senior center is where I met Gerry and where I asked about blacksmithing lessons while I traded my art skills for his blacksmithing skills.

I still miss Mustang Sally.

Rest in peace, Sally. I will see you on the other side. Maybe then we can talk again. I certainly hope so.

That is all. Disperse.

Power your house with dirt

A couple of days ago I proposed an alternative to solar and wind energy; I said use human (man) power.

Just today, I read about a man who was being hounded by his neighbors because he was powering his house with a device he uses that employs wires stuck in the dirt. Mr. Joseph Wilkerson isn't the first to cut his energy bills by this method; he learned it from someone else in his community who shared the secret with him for saving his daughter from drowning when she broke through an icy lake and plunged in. It was a good thing Wilkerson heard her and was able to pull her to safety. Actually, it was his dog that heard her and led Wilkerson to where she fell through. He pulled her out. Where is a St. Bernard when you need one?

Wilkerson had already crossed paths with Mr. Harris who wasn't upset about the electric company because his friend who lived high up in the mountains already had his earth-powered generator in place and had shared the secret with Mr. Harris who eventually gave the secret to Wilkerson who put over $25,000 into researching the device and wants to make some of his money back now that he no longer has to pay exorbitant rates to the electric company.

I have no dog in this race and I did not buy Wilkerson's plans or put any money into this earth-powered generator, but I will still tell you about it. You can choose to contribute to Wilkerson's plans and pay his fees, but I prefer to give the information to you so you can choose which way to go for yourself.

I have done some surfing on the web and have come up with the news that MIT has teams of scientists who are researching and putting their energy into bacteria-based electricity that is available to anyone who has two wires to stick into the ground or at least a septic tank generating a whole lot of bacteria underground. MIT engineers have come up with a plan to increase the electrical output of their device and a way to boost the bacterial output of the ground and the electricity that goes into the ground every time the lightning strikes the ground.

You can save money on your electric bills and even sell your electricity back to the electric company when you have the device installed and are making enough electricity to power your home and sell back to the electric company -- or get a check in the mail or a credit on your bill when the electric company realizes that THEY owe you money instead of the other way around.

MIT engineers are also working on way to turn their bacteria-generated electricity into batteries and power the neighborhood, city, or state where you live, but it's not there yet.

I propose there are many people out there with the brains and ingenuity to figure a way to generate electricity sooner than the MIT engineers -- or not. Either way, it is your choice. Do or do not do, as Yoda famously said to Luke Skywalker.

I am a tattletale; ask my siblings. You will not have to ask; mention my name and they will tell YOU that I am a tattletale and tell all their secrets to the world. I'm a writer after all.

The link to the previous post can be found on this website or you can click on the link here. I am all about helping people. I am a tattletale after all. I have given you the information you need and you can decide whether to share my information or pay Mr. Wilkerson for his plans. Your choice.

That is all. Disperse.

Secrets are not secrets any more

I wonder how much information is too much information?

I've been watching Finding Your Roots on PBS and I wonder. I probably wonder because my siblings are always after me for telling their secrets -- or outing other family members (like I did with my dad). They are upset because they did not know or suspected or maybe because they do not want to know.

How long can you keep a secret? As long as one other person knows -- not long.

Carly Simon's grandmother told her she would never know -- probably because her grandmother did not know. Mr. Gates found out that Carly Simon and her family were considered black; they already knew they were from Cuba. Maybe that is the secret that her grandmother kept from her; that she was black. According to the DNA test, Carly and her family were more black than they (or she) thought. DNA will tell the truth when people want to keep their history secret -- or at least out of the hands of the family that write about it (as in my case).

In my case, I already knew I had some black relatives. I'd heard the story that once upon a time a slave ran away from his master and the Cherokee adopted him. The Cherokee people (or nation) were always adopting others, including runaway slaves. I'll bet there was no Emancipation Proclamation freeing the runaway slaves adopted by the Cherokee; the runaway slave was already free -- he had run away and been adopted by the Cherokee people. No Emancipation Proclamation needed to free him; he was already free.

My great grandmother was born Cherokee and is on the Cherokee rolls, so I am quarter Cherokee anyway. My youngest sister did a DNA test and found out that she is descended from an
African. It shows up in the DNA.

I remember Mom taunting Dad with her sharp tongue. There was a painting or portrait of a black man in an attic in someone's (a relative's home) and she had seen it. Could it have been of the runaway slave adopted into the Cherokee nation? I never saw the portrait, but I already knew about the tale of the runaway slave who had been adopted by the Cherokee. No surprise to me. Evidently, it was a surprise to my sister when it showed up on the DNA test.

A lot of things my siblings find so difficult to understand is why and how I can open myself up by writing about my life and the experiences I've had over the years. BB is so afraid that people will talk about her, so me talking (or rather writing) about her (and the family) is a faux pas too far.
So why bother getting your DNA since everything about your history is in your blood.

Or rather their blood.

It could be why BB does not want to get her CNA tested and find out for sure. The things I know about this family and about them is a scratch on the surface compared to giving up blood or sitting into a test tube to find out your DNA.

I wonder how Mom, especially considering she was a racist, and had racists in her family, dealt with that news? Since she married Dad and had decided he was going to marry her when she was eleven years old and met him for the first time, being prejudiced would prove a sticking point but not much of a sticking point since she married him anyway. The strange thing is that Dad was also prejudiced -- something I didn't know until he flipped out when JC, my brother's only son, wanted to take Ebony, a black girl, to the high school prom. I never realized that Dad was prejudiced until that time. I always thought Dad was a good man, an honest man, but never considered him prejudiced. It was a secret he kept to himself -- much like the fact that he was also a homosexual. I knew about that because I discovered that tidbit of information in the middle of the night when I was up watching La Cage aux Folles (the French version on HBO) and Dad was up to watch the movie. I had heard the stories about Dad's extracurricular activities and had discounted them until that night. I forgot about all that because I had put it out of my mind, pooh-poohed the tales, and went on with my life. It was not the ah-ha moment I had when I discovered that Rock Hudson was gay. I took the news as a shock to my soul. Less shocking was that Jim Nabors and several other father figures (Dick Sergent, Robert Reed, and so on -- including these actors). Who surprised you? I will bet it wasn't Paul Lynde or Liberace. I knew about Tab Hunter the same way I finally found out about Rock Hudson (no, it wasn't because I guessed but because I read it in the tabloids.)


I think Rock Hudson had to come out because he contracted AIDS/HIV. Hudson was also linked with Jim Nabors which was also tabloid fodder, but Nabors died in Honolulu and was married to Stan Cadwallader, with whom he had been living for over 30 years (38 years to be exact). Turns out both actors kept away from each other (Hudson & Nabors) in order to keep from being outed. They were just friends.

In the end, that is all. Disperse.